We’ve just shipped the first feature in the Zashi–NEAR integration: a private, decentralized off-ramp for shielded ZEC. Starting today, you can swap shielded ZEC to any NEAR-supported cryptocurrency in Zashi.
How It Works
Open Zashi and go to More → Swap
Enter the amount of shielded ZEC you want to swap.
Add the destination wallet address for the cryptocurrency you want to receive.
Review the quote and confirm.
That’s it! Because you’re swapping from your shielded address, your address, balances, and transaction history remain fully protected.
For some of us, centralized exchanges aren’t even an option. For others, it’s about not handing over personal information to entities that act as honeypots for hackers. This feature gives you another path:
A convenient, decentralized, private off-ramp when centralized exchanges aren’t possible or desired.
Convert only the ZEC you need, while the rest of your balance stays shielded.
Extra protection in places where financial privacy is a necessary safeguard, not just a preference.
This isn’t the full swap functionality in Zashi yet. That’s still coming. But it’s a meaningful first step, and it lays the groundwork for what’s next: private cross-chain payments and full swaps in and out of ZEC inside Zashi.
Take Zashi’s new private off-ramp for a spin and let us know what it unlocks for you!
Use case: a crypto newbie friend wants to pay a tab with his “crypto visa” and split it with you.
Use this feature to Send this normie USDT or USDC from your Shielded ZEC stash.
show your friend a path away from fiat and surveillance coins
For anxoius Zebras:
If you need to go from DeFi into $ZEC and you can’t wait until the next iteration of this feature in Zashi, using WalletConnect via your transparent ledger wallet of choice works pretty seamlessly.
Use case: a crypto newbie friend wants to split a tab and send you USDT from a CEX.
Step 0. try to help that friend use ZEC. If no success, don’t push it! Let it be and continue. Don’t preach, lead with the example.
create a throwaway wallet on Metamask, Unstoppable or Trust Wallet. (back it up somehow quick)
receive the USDT on Near Intents networks (Eth, polygon, etc)
Use the Near intents web UI and wallet connect to swap for ZEC
It hasn’t landed in my F-Droid updates yet but that will be an absolute banger feature for many people; definitely one for me. Thanks to all involved in making this happen!!
After that I don’t really see what is the point anymore of parking funds in public blockchains (unless of course creepy peeping Tom’s and getting your fingers cut off are your kind of things).
What is happening when we pay for something through a swap in say USDC (ERC-20) and for any reason the recipient decides to refund the amount to the originating address?
I feel confident we’ll get to that point being valid, but we’re not quite there yet. “Parking fund” is the Store of Value property of money and we don’t yet truly have that on Zcash. There are a few more reasons actually so let’s stay humble, always anyway.
Talking only for myself here, but storing funds on Zcash puts them outside the realm of envy and wrath. That’s an enormous value that I don’t see anywhere else at the moment and that will prove very useful in the times to come.
But for those that are still lost in the labyrinth of fiat illusion, please be my guest and continue to use public blockchains, I’m sure they will be very gentle with you.
That’s the thing between my perspective and yours. I am talking about the general population, not about myself. Clearly, I use and own ZEC as well, for reasons not too dissimilar to yours.
We need people not to be lost and we can’t just put the burden on them, we need to be at least as easy and reliable as fiat, and then we need to be even better on all of the three properties of money.
Funds are lost. (well, they go to NEAR’s TSS vault that is co-managed by its validators, there is no path to refund that I am aware of)
This is an extreme edge case these days though. I use crypto for payments at least 3x per day and haven’t seen a vendor auto-refund to an address, without asking me first, in years. I wouldn’t worry about it but definitely do your own diligence with merchants you intend to send crypto to.
That it to say that, unless the Zashi team is feeling very confident that it won’t be an issue for the “general public”, they may want to consider a little visible disclaimer. To be clear, I do not have a position here. I am very happy about this feature and I just want people to enjoy it in a way that does not eventually result in unfortunate negative feedback.
This uses NEAR’s 1Click API right? What is logged, if anything, on their servers? I’ve been poking around for a privacy policy but have not found one yet.
Are IPs logged, user agents?
What is the data retention policy? (how long are the T addresses used for ZEC deposits cached on their server? they’re stored forever on their blockchain so it might not matter but I’m just curious)
What legal entity is actually hosting the 1Click API and in which jurisdiction?
Can we get NEAR API requests to route over Tor in a future update?
Thanks for integrating this, it’s amazing. I’d just like clarity on the privacy realities of using it.
A few observations after a code review of the iOS side, I haven’t had time to look through Android:
The user’s transparent address is shared with NEAR’s 1Click API server upon each quote, before a swap occurs. Consider improving this by showing the user a “Welcome to NEAR Intents, here is what will be shared [Agree]” screen before their first swap.
The transparent address shared with NEAR’s 1Click API server does not appear to rotate.
For anyone curious, the affiliate fees are sent to “electriccoinco.near” as wrapped ZEC on the NEAR blockchain. The fee is currently set to 0.5% of each swap. It’s cool seeing some significant volume given how new the feature is!
This is a Zashi limitation as we don’t currently rotate taddrs. I’m hopeful that NEAR will add support for sending to a shielded address soon. The address is used for refunds.
Maybe also a network filter can be useful, as you can find in LeoDEX.
